In schools, psycho-education is a classroom behavior management method that aims at training teachers and students about children's emotional and behavioral problems. Psycho-educational teachers believe that socio-emotional growth happens when children understand the role that emotions play in their school difficulties. Psycho-educational theory and methods include cognitive (thinking), affective (feelings), and behavior aspects.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

1)Adopt
a middle ground. Be firm in enforcing rules, but do it in a way that you
balance it with warmth, praise, understanding, fairness, responsiveness, and
acceptance of the troubled student’s needs.

2)Increase
your tolerance for angry feelings and acting-out behaviors by identifying
positive attributes in the feelings or behavior; for example, independence,
leadership qualities, or strong character.

3)Change
your teaching style from stationary to circulating
so that you can walk by the troubled, anger-prone, or acting-out student every
five-to-six minutes.

4)Use
proximity control, such as walking
towards the student, putting one hand on the child’s shoulder or desk, and/or (without saying a word) removing any object
that is distracting the child.

5)Model
calmness, gentleness, and respect. Address children using “Thank you,” “I’m
sorry,” or “I apologize.” Teachers should never be afraid of saying to children
that we are sorry, or acknowledging the fact that we make mistakes too.
Students respect us more when they perceive we are fair.

6)According
to Goldstein, Harootunian, and Conoley (as found in Slap-Shelton, 1994) teachers’
characteristics that lead to sound decision making when dealing with disruptive
students include the following:

a)Remaining
calm in the face of a crisis

b)Listening
actively without becoming defensive and/or authoritarian

c)Avoiding
win-lose situations

d)Maintaining
a problem solving approach

7)Increase
your awareness of how your own behavior and particular ways of handling
conflict influence your students’ behaviors. Write your reflections in a
journal, so that you can see how effective your interventions are, as well as
detect any areas where you need to improve. Look for patterns of interacting
and behaving in both your students and yourself. Periodically review your
progress, assessing how it is going, and making modifications as needed.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Anger-prone students may exhibit some, most, or all of the characteristics listed next.

1. Anger-prone students have habitual anger outbursts that seem out of proportion to the situation.

2. Habitually angry children think negatively most of the time about themselves, other people, or situations.

3. When dealing with difficult events, troubled and anger-prone students display catastrophic thinking, a thinking pattern that assumes that the worst thing that can happen is what is going to happen.

4. Anger can be identity or role-congruent for these children; that is, feeling angry all the time matches their self-image (e.g., “I cannot help myself. That’s the way I am”). Their perception of being an angry individual becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, validated by frequent outbursts of anger and acting-out behaviors.

5. Troubled and anger-prone students show low frustration tolerance, and they demand that what they want or need is satisfied immediately.

6. Anger-prone students show poor internal control or self-control.

7. One of the most common types of anger in children is the explosive type; this explosive type is characterized by sudden and intense angry feelings coupled with a loss of self-control, for example, a temper tantrum. In the explosive type, a minor annoyance can lead to a major outburst. Noncompliance and oppositional behaviors are common in anger-prone students. Anger-prone students also show a greater display of aggressive behaviors than their regular age-peers.

8. Anger-prone students show inflexible emotional reactions to different kinds of situations, labeling most situations as angry situations, or opportunities to feel angry.

9. Troubled and anger-prone students have a limited vocabulary forexpressing their feelings (e.g. joyful, scornful, amazed, or annoyed) which limits their ability to label their emotions accurately and to handle their feelings effectively.

10.Troubled and anger-prone students exhibit what the cognitive literature calls tunnel vision. Their thinking seems impenetrable to environmental cues that can generate alternative explanations to the event, or can generate positive feelings.

11.Children in general have difficulty separating their behavior from their identity. Some children do not understand that you do your behavior, but you are not your behavior. This concept is particularly difficult to grasp for anger-prone and behavioral disordered students.

12.Anger-prone students are sensitive to the perceived criticism from others, interpreting all criticism and feedback as negative. They are easily irritated and offended by criticism. They do not like lectures, or having other people giving them advice or telling them what they should do.

13.They act on impulse rather than thought, failing to engage in a cognitive checking of their thoughts and feelings. Anger-prone and behavioral disordered children have little insight into their difficulties, and they do not make a connection between their temper and their behavior difficulties. They tend to minimize their problems in school.

14.They blame other people or external events for their problems, with little insight in how they contributed in creating the problem. They take little or no responsibility for their own behavior, placing the blame outside themselves (others condemnation).

15.Anger-prone students interpret events according to their own negative belief system. One common belief in these children is that everyone is against them.

16.Troubled, anger-prone, and behavioral disordered children have difficulty interpreting social cues appropriately, because they fail to encode all the relevant environmental cues and information. They interpret most gestures as aggressive, or can interpret a neutral situation as threatening.

17.They distort information, which leads to distorting and misperceiving what happened. In addition, when interpreting the event, they show a restricted perception of reality, focusing only on one part of the event- the part that fits into their belief system.

18.Anger-prone children have difficulty seeing things from someone else’s point of view (perspective taking). For this reason, they do not understand the negative effect of their behavior on others; oppositional-defiant children in particular show a lack of empathy for the feelings of others.

19.They show poor social skills and a deficit in social problem solving, that is, in solving problems that underlie social interactions. An anger-prone and/or emotionally troubled child is deficient in the number of solutions he is able to generate to solve a social problem.

20.Troubled, anger-prone, and behaviorally disordered children seem unaffected by or unresponsive to social consequences. With these children, a rewards system alone (e.g. stickers and prizes) does not work well. Punishment alone (e.g. losing privileges) is also likely to fail.

For more information on the topic of angry students, and to learn techniques and interventions to help children with anger problems, you can read:

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Introducing "The Psycho-Educational Teacher"

Psycho-education is an enhanced behavior management approach based on the principle that, no matter how severe a behavior problem is, all children can grow socio-emotionally and can learn how to self-control behavior. Psycho-educational teachers believe that socio-emotional growth takes place when children understand the role that emotions play in their school difficulties. This therapeutic approach aims at helping children understand how their troubling feelings and emotions influence their behavior. A teacher trained in psycho-education applies skilled child guidance techniques to help children develop effective coping strategies, self-control of behavior, and social problem-solving skills. Psycho-educational principles and techniques include cognitive (thinking), affective (feelings), and behavioral aspects. This innovative blog is a must read for teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents with an interest in psycho-educational theory and methods to help children with recurrent behavior problems.

About Me

My teaching career includes more than twenty years of experience as a self-contained special education teacher, resource room teacher, and educational diagnostician. My classroom background, in New York City and my native Puerto Rico, includes ten years teaching emotionally disturbed/behaviorally disordered students and four years teaching children with a learning disability or mental retardation. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology (University of Puerto Rico), and a master's degree in special education with a specialization in emotional disorders (Long Island University, Brooklyn: NY). I also have extensive graduate training in psychology (30+ credits). I am the author of 50+ books and articles in psycho-education and in alternative teaching techniques to help students with low academic skills. My publications are available on my free blog, "The Psycho-Educational Teacher."